Is Sam Rainsy the leader of the opposition in the Cambodian National Assembly, or is he the head of the Khmer-language section of Radio Free Asia? If the question strikes you as strange, then you haven’t been following RFA’s Khmer-language broadcasts, and the connection will be explained after a few other necessary points are dealt with.

On 29 August, RFA broadcast what is known in Western journalism as a “hatchet job” – that is, an article designed to discredit the person or organisation that is its subject.

Of course, there are some people or things that deserve to be discredited. But responsible journalists make sure that’s what they are dealing with before they produce a hatchet job. Equally important, they make sure to present facts that justify the attempt to discredit whoever or whatever it is.

The quality of RFA’s pretend journalism is revealed right from the start. The headline is “Cambodian Red Cross under political influence”. The phrase is in quotation marks, which means that somebody said it. Who? In reality, probably no one, unless the “journalist” was quoting himself. The phrase doesn’t appear in the broadcast; the quotation marks are there to fool the unwary into thinking that the RFA’s political hatchet job is what some knowledgeable person said.

According to the broadcast, while most Cambodians may think that the CRC is engaged in helping people suffering from natural disasters or armed conflict, its real role is to distribute funds to Cambodian People’s Party supporters in the provinces and to launder illegally gained money.

RFA isn’t quite silly enough to repeat Sam Rainsy’s exaggerated rhetoric, but it essentially repeats and adds to the latter’s complaint that the CRC isn’t doing things it was never meant to do.